Conventionally, to increase the speed of transfer of a workpiece between press devices and to extend the reach, a transfer tool configured from a slide mechanism which is attached to a tip of a wrist of an articulated robot and which linearly moves a workpiece in one direction is known (for example, see PTL 1).
The transfer tool described in PTL 1 includes, on front and back surfaces of a strip-shaped frame, two sliders which are supported in a manner capable of linearly moving along a longitudinal direction of the frame and which are coupled to each other by a belt.
With this transfer tool, when a wrist-side slider fixed to a wrist of an articulated robot is driven in one direction along the longitudinal direction of the frame, a workpiece-side slider supporting a workpiece is moved in the opposite direction, and thus, transfer of the workpiece may be performed at a high speed, and also, the reach may be extended to the extent of a movable range of each slider, and a stroke two times the movable range of each slider may be obtained.
Furthermore, the transfer tool in PTL 1 includes, at the workpiece-side slider, a distal-end swing shaft for causing a workpiece to swing around an axis line extending in a width direction of the frame. By causing the distal-end swing shaft to operate, the attitude of a supported workpiece may be changed without moving the frame of the transfer tool.